The Brief 

SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity, reached out wanting to produce an educational animation film for the Gurkha community based in Nepal, to highlight the challenges people can face when moving to the UK.   

The Idea 

Having worked with SSAFA on several other projects prior to this, we jumped at the chance to work with them again and producing a film in Nepalese was something new for our team but a challenge we were eager to take on. 

Getting this film right was important to both SSAFA and our team, so there were a lot of development meetings to begin with. During these meetings we discussed the best creative approach for this project, that would also communicate the key messaging effectively, in a way that would be culturally accessible and engaging to our target audience – retired Gurkha military personnel.  

The Process 

The scripting process gave both our team and SSAFA a great foundation to make sure we were aligned from a narrative perspective. We decided it should be from a first person perspective, a relatable voice of someone who had experienced this journey, to give audiences confidence in our messaging. 

Early on our team knew we needed a bold visual design to bring our concept and characters to life. We got one of our very talented animators onboard, who is known for their painterly effect, hand drawn animations. Their work has such a unique mix of realism and lyricalism, it injects so much humanity and emotion into each and every scene. 

Even though our production schedule was hit by delays due to Covid, our team managed to continue a seamless, remote workflow and delivered the video for both online usage and DVD distribution.